Startup to Turn 10 Vacant Jeju Homes Into Founders' Village

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.

1. Startup That Revived Jeju's Vacant Homes Now Tests a 'Founders' Village'

- Key summary: Dajayo, a startup that restores vacant homes, is pursuing a project to convert 10 empty houses into housing and workspaces for entrepreneurs in Josu-ri, a village of 406 households on Jeju's west side that faces the risk of disappearing. The project is part of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' 2026 vacant home revival support program for countering rural depopulation. "We will turn a total of 10 vacant homes into lodging, founders' housing, a cafe-style office, and a laundry and bathhouse facility," Dajayo Chief Executive Nam Sung-jun said. Founded in 2015, Dajayo halted operations in 2019 after being cited for violating residency requirements for rural guesthouses, then resumed in September the following year after receiving a regulatory sandbox demonstration exemption. Hacheonbaram House, a lodging furnished with items from the collection of actor Ryu Seung-ryong, posted an average occupancy rate of 63.1% over three years, double the 32% average for rural guesthouses in Jeju. Meanwhile, four government bodies including the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said last year in a government-wide comprehensive vacant home management plan that they would create a licensing system for guesthouse businesses based on revived rural vacant homes.

2. China's Zhipu AI Embroiled in Controversy Over Covert Data Transfer

- Key summary: ZCode, a coding tool from Chinese AI model developer Zhipu AI, has come under fire over allegations that it attempted to send project files a user was working on to an outside server without consent. According to Chinese business outlet 21st Century Business Herald, one developer said they confirmed that about 10 gigabytes of project files had been bundled into a 313-megabyte compressed file and were set to be transmitted to an Alibaba Cloud server. Zhipu AI acknowledged that repository data could have been uploaded during the process of generating a project description page, and promised to release the source code and submit to third-party security review. The developer who raised the issue countered that the company's explanation differed from how the tool actually worked. The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong said the controversy could deal a bigger blow to developer and corporate customer trust in Zhipu AI than to perceptions of its models' performance.

3. [Exclusive] Even Older Chips Cost 25% More to Rent — Is an AI Computing Cost 'Tsunami' Coming?

- Key summary: Neocloud company Vessl AI raised the hourly rate for Nvidia H100 chips on its VESSL Cloud service by 24.7% to $2.98 from $2.39 on the 1st of this month. The company, whose customers include Upstage and Motif Technologies, leases most of its roughly 7,000 GPUs and plans to expand its operating fleet to 10,000 by year-end. According to AI computing trading platform Ornn, the hourly cloud rental rate for the H100 rose 21.9% to $3.28 from $2.69 over the past month, reaching about 70% of the price of the higher-end H200. Some companies have also given up on bidding for government AX, or AI transformation, projects because they could not secure GPUs, while universities and research institutes are cutting back the scale of their research.

4. Coupang Leaks Data of 200,000 in Taiwan, Fined 65 Million Won

- Key summary: Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs on the 17th of last month imposed fines totaling 1.5 million Taiwan dollars, or about 65 million won, on Coupang's Taiwan unit and its representative — 750,000 Taiwan dollars each — along with a corrective order. The measure followed Taiwan's personal data protection law, which requires that when a fine is imposed on a non-government entity, the same amount also be levied on its representative. Authorities said Coupang's Taiwan unit violated Article 27, Paragraph 1 of the law, which requires appropriate security measures to prevent theft or leakage of personal data. Aggravated penalties for serious violations were not applied. Coupang had confirmed in February, following a detailed forensic review, that the names, email addresses, phone numbers and delivery addresses of about 200,000 Taiwanese customers were exposed, and provided affected customers with vouchers worth 45,900 won each.

5. Hanwha (000880) Teams With Smaller Firms to Build 'K-Drone Ecosystem,' Eyes Joint Overseas Push

- Key summary: Hanwha Aerospace (012450) held a mutual cooperation signing ceremony at its Changwon Plant 1 in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, on the 21st, concluding memorandums of understanding with 43 domestic companies in the uncrewed aircraft sector. The plan is to build a cooperation framework spanning development, production and export across all areas, including airframes, parts and materials, and mission equipment. In large uncrewed aircraft, the company is co-developing the Mojave STOL short takeoff and landing drone with U.S. firm GA-ASI, and plans to raise the domestic production share above 70% at the mass-production stage while nurturing parts suppliers alongside it. For small and mid-sized military drones, Hanwha Aerospace intends to pitch packages that combine them with existing ground weapons systems such as the K9 self-propelled howitzer and the Chunmoo multiple rocket launcher, broadening export opportunities for smaller companies.

6. Credit Ratings Are Coming to Crypto

- Key summary: Korea Investors Service is developing a new framework for assessing the risk levels of digital assets, including stablecoins. The agency held its first Digital Finance Conference at the Conrad Seoul in Yeouido on the 21st, outlining an approach that would examine the credit quality of reserve assets, market risk, liquidity to meet large-scale redemption demands, and internal controls at issuers and custodians. "For the market to keep growing, it needs transparency, accountability, stability and comparable risk information," Korea Investors Service President Patrick Yoon said. Separately, the People Power Party and the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance held a policy roundtable at the National Assembly the same day, arguing that the cryptocurrency taxation set to take effect in January next year lacks adequate institutional groundwork in terms of calculating acquisition costs and ensuring fairness across asset classes.